Summary: Richard Doll joined the Communist Party as a reaction to the “anarchy and waste” of capitalism in the 1930s. He treated the blistered feet of the Jarrow Marchers, served as a medical officer at the retreat to Dunkirk, and campaigned for a National Health Service before the end of the Second World War. At that time, British men had the highest incidence of lung cancer in the world. In 1950, Doll and Bradford Hill showed that smoking was ‘a cause and an important cause’ of the rapidly increasing epidemic of lung cancer. In 1989 the British Medical Journal described Doll as “Britain’s most distinguished doctor”.